Update for Ubuntu 12.10 and Lotus Notes

Installing Lotus Notes has forced me once again to re-evaluate installing IBM Lotus Notes.  I am pleased to report that there is less steps involved!

These are the packages that I had to install in order to get Lotus Notes working from apt package manager:

apt-get install ia32-libs libgnomeprint2.2-0:i386 libgnomeprintui2.2-0:i386 \
    libgnomevfs2-0:i386 libgnome2-0:i386 libgnomeui-0:i386 libavahi-glib1:i386 \
    libbonobo2-0:i386 libpopt0:i386 libbonoboui2-0:i386 liborbit2:i386 \
    libart-2.0-2:i386 libgnomecanvas2-0:i386

I believe that it is still necessary to unpack the deb files and fix them.  For simplicity I am recycling my old script to do this.  To fix the packages themselves would require a bit of work (adding ":386") however then producing a patch could be helpful.

SRC_DEB="$(pwd)"
TAR=lotus_notes853_linuxUb_en.tar
TMP_INSTALL=/tmp/notes
NOTES_DEB_MODIFY="notes sametime"
NOTES_VERSION="8.5.3.i586"

if [ ! -e "$SRC_DEB/$TAR" ]; then
   echo "Could not find $TAR tar file in current folder."
   exit 0
fi

[ -e "$TMP_INSTALL" ] && rm -rf "$TMP_INSTALL"
mkdir -p "$TMP_INSTALL"

cp "$SRC_DEB/$TAR" "$TMP_INSTALL"
cd "$TMP_INSTALL"

tar xf "$TAR"

for DEB in $NOTES_DEB_MODIFY; do
   P="ibm-lotus-$DEB-$NOTES_VERSION"
   mkdir "$P"
   cd "$P"
   ar x "../$P.deb"

   mkdir DEBIAN
   tar xf data.tar.gz
   tar xf control.tar.gz -C DEBIAN

   cd DEBIAN
   cat control | sed -re "s/^(Pre\-Depends|Depends|Recommends|Conflicts):\s*.*$/\1:/" > control-mod
   mv control-mod control

   cd ..
   rm control.tar.gz
   rm data.tar.gz
   rm debian-binary

   cd ..
   sudo dpkg-deb -b "$P"
   rm -rf "$P"

   sudo dpkg -i --force-all $P.deb
done

Finally there are some changes to a few of the included libraries that I pulled directly from IBM's community article here.

wget http://www.freetechie.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0
wget http://www.freetechie.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0
wget http://www.freetechie.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk_pixbuf_xlib-2.0.so.0
wget http://www.freetechie.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
sudo mv *.so.0 /opt/ibm/lotus/notes

I also needed the following so that I could open attachments.

# Make opening attachments work
sudo mv /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/openwith /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/openwith.bak
sudo ln -s $(which gnome-open) /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/openwith

Creating this shortcut within the Lotus Notes install folder cleared up some of the bugs.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gtk-2.0/modules/libcanberra-gtk-module.so \
   /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/libcanberra-gtk-module.so

That's it! There seems to be some issues with the Lotus Notes loading dialog box that were not there in my previous script. Not a big deal as everything else seems to work well. Enjoy!

Installing Lotus Notes for Ubuntu 12.04 x86_64

Bare in mind here that this is my first post using blogger.

Not too long ago I was working with my IT on installing Lotus Notes for Ubuntu.  The fact that they even had deb file was amazing.  Sadly, the targeted architecture was only 32 bit.  Doing some Goolging I found a few links with bits and pieces such as this one from IBM but the most help I found was from here.

Following the later link I have put together an installer script using the Lotus Notes deb package file which installs the package and installs the necessary 32 bit libraries.  You can find my script on Google Code.

There are still some occasions when the gtk decorator fails.  When this happens you loose the ability to move and resize all windows.  I know that it has something to do with menus being located on the top Ubuntu bar versus being located on the application window top bar.

The fix is simple for the gtk decorator.  Just run the following command:

compiz-decorator